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Ace disappears. The moment a part of the world becomes digital, he disappears from their sight.
Neon isn’t worried, per se.
Ace is not in danger. He’s just cautious. They all are.
Keiwa and Michinaga don’t belong in that space, they stalk the wilds of the new world, wilds interrupted by a broken civilization trying to fix itself. Neon, however, visits.
This is the future where her nature is normal. Not that she thinks of herself as anything but normal. Anything but human. Not in so long that mentioning it feels overdramatic and unnecessary.
Perhaps it’s ironic to say that, when she’s over a thousand years old. But she doesn’t believe she’s truly changed.
She slips between worlds, and her loves hide, but only two can she ever reach.
“Not everyone made the right choice,” Michinaga says, arms crossed. He’s abandoned any pretense of humanity, his skin too pale and too green, his eyes glowing. “It’s a hard pill to swallow.”
“None of us expected everyone to choose the world,” Keiwa argues. He’s not kept his humanity on purpose, his demon merely holds too much pride in being normal, simple, natural . Sometimes Neon wonders if it’s really only the demon left, but then Keiwa does something so utterly awkward and sweet that the thought quickly fades away . “But. .. yeah, it’s a little rough right now. Both worlds have. .. peace, though.”
“I wouldn’t call their world peace,” Neon says. She looks up at the sky, the glowing digital spiral of the future that made them.
Keiwa sighs.
“I guess not.”
They have each other, weaving towards and past each other whenever possible. Ace deciding to leave them has never been an ending before, so why now?
They don’t watch the DGP. They don’t actively fight it.
That’s for the people of the past to overcome.
They aren’t uninvolved.
Michinaga speaks to those who venture from the failing cities. Keiwa helps those who remain. Their son spends his time deep in the Jyamato lands, and while they hail him as a god, he walks among the slowly growing mixed lands like a normal man.
Haruki doesn’t hate humanity, or even plan to tear down the glittering digital metropolis above.
They raised him well.
Neon visits Ace’s temple. It still shows up wherever it is needed, even in the digital world. That’s the first time she catches sight of him.
She ascends the stairs and watches him, surely invisible, as a group of plush-shaped children discuss their wishes. He’s smiling, and she can tell it’s from the hope of people in this empty world making dreams for themselves. Lives.
He looks like a god.
Neon smiles anyways.
Haruki visits them one day. He doesn’t always - he’s a grown man with a life of his own. But they are all together.
“Good,” he says. “Geats-San is coming home. Soon.”
Keiwa jumps up and trips over a root, the plant life having overtaken a home they’ve maintained for centuries.
“Really?”
Haruki nods.
“I can feel it.”
And Neon realizes, so can she. And so can Michinaga, given his lack of surprise.
“That’s just the nature of time, I guess,” Michinaga says. “I’m gonna kick his ass, for leaving us.”
He of course does no such thing. .. well, not too much.
Ace walks hesitantly into their home. Awe like he can’t quite believe it, only to effortlessly dodge Michinaga’s punch and catch Keiwa’s hug, and then Neon’s.
Neon laughs, leaning against him. Keiwa is the warmest, brimstone fire and space trails in his blood. Michinaga is the coldest, but it feels like coming home for how no one else is like him.
Ace simply thrums with energy .
“I feel so loved,” Ace says, a tremor on his voice as he looks at Michinaga.
“That’s what you get for fucking off for five hundred goddamn years.”
“Aw, I missed you too,” Ace says.
Neon feels Keiwa tense. She’s sure his fingers dig into Ace enough to bruise.
“Where were you?” Keiwa asks.
“...I’m not sure, yet,” Ace says. “Ask me tomorrow.”
Keiwa doesn’t push. Neon can tell this isn’t their Ace, not quite yet.
That night, when he thinks they’re asleep, he sobs.
“We did it, in the end,” he says. “It only took one more chance. A world where everyone can be happy.”
Michinaga’s hand digs into her. They don’t press Ace for more.
There’s a version of their past selves that died unfulfilled. Neon would never ask Ace to forget.
Tomorrow comes, and Ace keeps his word.
“. ..I was watching over this world,” Ace says. “I had to be sure. That there would be a future.”
Neon sighs.
“Ace. ..”
Ace’s smile falls to sadness.
“It is an empty world without peace, love, and rebirth,” he says. “One that I have not yet forgotten.”
This is the Ace they met that day. When they met Haruki, this was where he returned to.
“But I was right,” Ace says. “To trust you all with the future.”
“Damn right,” Michinaga says, and he joins the group at last to pull Ace into a rough kiss.
This is a world they can always protect. Together.